I have made the no-knead bread several times and LOVE it. My question is about the "crackling sound" that everybody says they hear when it is taken out of the oven during its cooling period. Why do I not hear it? If I put my ear right up next to the bread, I may hear an occasional, isolated cracking sound or two, but NOTHING like described by all! Why is this characteristic missing from my otherwise perfect bread?_________________bjames

bjames, I think (and I may be really wrong about this) when people talk about the crackling, they are discussing the incredible crackle you get when first cutting the bread that this recipe creates. The crust is a crisp as a cracker. I have never heard it crackle coming out of the oven either.

Now that we've resurrected the topic, however, I'd like to repeort that Sam received a fish poacher for Christmas - to use for bread baking!

He has already used it to make a loaf of bread from Shirley Corriher's Cookwise cookbook - he made the Mighty Multi-Grain bread (page 54) and formed a lo-o-o-ng loaf. It was just brilliant. I am hoping for something more baguette-y next time. He would have had to halve the dough on this recipe for it to be a baguette. For me, the ratio between crust (oh, yum!) and insides is just perfect in a nice skinny baguette! I'll let you know if he manages it with the new pan! _________________L'appetit vient en mangeant. -Rabelais

Well no one can say that I am not a late starter, would you believe that I just baked this bread a few days ago and totally love the results. Why oh why did I wait so long? On a related note, where do you all store your breads - I read somewhere that it should not be stored in the refrigerator.

To answer your storage question, I would never keep bread in the fridge (I'd worry about flavor anesthesia + molding), but then again I live in a rather temperate/dry part of the world.

What works for us is to wrap the loaf in a paper bag (French bread is always sold in a thin paper bag so we use that), and wrap that tightly in a cloth bread bag. (Or, before we had the bread bag, a dishtowel.) Bread keeps very well that way.

I've recently started making bread with a wild yeast starter, and in addition to the great flavor, those loaves stay fresh even longer.